


I am coming home to you, with my own blood in my mouth

by spacemancharisma



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, just a short fic where everyone has anxiety and everything works out okay, like really that's the whole fic, set during PR, uprising don't kill my vibe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22856617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemancharisma/pseuds/spacemancharisma
Summary: “Hermann, I’m not stupid, if the fucking black market mobster that I’m going to try to con out of a goddamn kaiju brain doesn’t shoot me on the spot, Pentecost is going to have me drift with it again, it’s an order, and Hermann, I did it once, I know how it felt, I know what it did to me, Hermann, I’m a biologist, I’m the world’s leading biologist, I know that drifting with another fucking kaiju will kill me,” Newt had begun to pace in short lines in front of Hermann, still unsteady on his feet, his hands fluttering in front of him like wings on an anxious moth. “It will hemorrhage my brain- we’ll be lucky if I’m conscious long enough to even tell anybody what else I learn, I,” he stopped pacing and Hermann watched his chest heave raggedly. “I’m gonna die today.”
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 7
Kudos: 75





	I am coming home to you, with my own blood in my mouth

Hermann didn’t understand how the conversation wasn’t over when Newton’s voice splintered around “I- I can’t do it again.” He found himself gaping like a fish in the background as the Marshal somehow ignored the unfiltered horror in Newton’s eyes, not to mention the blood smeared across his face and shirt and the way his whole body was shaking. How anyone could possibly look that man in the bleeding eye and tell him that _Yes, actually, the thing that made you look like this? You do in fact have to do it again_ , was beyond anything he had learned through either ten years of university or four different therapists.

He watched, his hands and feet growing colder by the second, as Newton struggled to his feet and stumbled out of the room to prepare himself to chase after a new kaiju brain. Hermann bit his tongue and clenched his hand on his cane, decades of practice the only reason he managed to keep quiet. He couldn’t remember ever being simultaneously so furious and so terribly, terribly afraid.

Newt returned to the lab with his jacket on and Hermann did his best to still his nervous fidgeting as he looked up to catch Newt’s intensely vacant gaze. Newt’s eyes bore holes into the far wall of the lab and his face was expressionless.

“I’m gonna die today.”

Hermann huffed and ignored the hitch in his breath. “Oh, don’t be dramatic, Newton, it’s not productive and you know that.”

Newt couldn’t seem to focus his eyes as he shook his head slowly. “No, Hermann, I mean it, I’m serious, I- I’m going to die today.”

Hermann grit his teeth. “Stop it.”

Newt finally met his eyes, and Hermann couldn’t ignore how deeply, heartachingly petrified he looked.

“Hermann, I’m not stupid, if the fucking black market mobster that I’m going to try to con out of a goddamn kaiju brain doesn’t shoot me on the spot, Pentecost is going to have me drift with it again, it’s an order, and Hermann, I did it once, I know how it felt, I know what it did to me, Hermann, I’m a biologist, I’m the world’s leading biologist, I know that drifting with another fucking kaiju will kill me,” Newt had begun to pace in short lines in front of Hermann, still unsteady on his feet, his hands fluttering in front of him like wings on an anxious moth. “It will hemorrhage my brain- we’ll be lucky if I’m conscious long enough to even tell anybody what else I learn, I,” he stopped pacing and Hermann watched his chest heave raggedly. “I’m gonna die today.” 

“Absolutely _not_ , and I will not have you speaking like that, Newton,” Hermann swallowed hard around the block of ice that had grown in his chest. “You are going to do as the Marshal says, and everything is going to go according to plan, and then you are going to come back here, and I will see you before the day is over.”

Newt’s eyes were glazed over once again and his shaking had somehow intensified. “I don’t wanna die, Hermann, I don’t wanna, I know I talk a big game and yeah, I’ve had some rough days, but I don’t want to die, not like this, not- not today, I-”

“ _You are not going to die!_ ”

Hermann didn’t realize that he was reaching out to grab Newton by the shoulders until he felt him tense under his hands, and it was much, much too easy to draw him in and hold him tightly where he fit so neatly with his head under Hermann’s chin. Newt’s hands clenched in the back of Hermann’s shirt tight enough to hurt, but it was something to stop the shaking. 

As he continued his panicked babbling into Hermann’s collar, Newt’s voice cracked like he was crying, and Hermann thought that maybe in actuality, he was the one who wasn’t going to make it through the night.

After a long moment of shaking in Hermann’s arms hard enough to nearly knock the both of them off of their feet, Newt pulled back with a choked-off and pained noise. He looked up at Hermann with something like agony, the look painted on his face achingly open, something unspoken coming dangerously close to the light. “I can’t die, not yet, I- I haven’t-”

And then Hermann’s hands fixed his face and drew their lips together.

“There,” he said decisively as he pulled away from Newt’s open, gasping mouth. “Now you have, and there’s your reason to make it back safely.”

“That’s not fair,” Newt’s voice was barely a whisper. “I love you, that’s not fair.”

“Goddamn you, I love you too.”

Newt leaned up and pushed another kiss onto Hermann’s mouth, tasting of tears. He broke the kiss with something like a laugh, or a sob, and gave a defeatist sort of smile. “You’re playing dirty here, you know that.”

“Maybe I am, but only with the best of intentions,” Hermann ran his thumb over Newton’s jaw, and Newt leaned into the touch like sunlight. “Anything to bring you back to me.” Then again, quieter, painfully sincere, “ _Anything_ to bring you back to me.”

Newt took a deep, tremulous breath, and squared his shoulders, nodding more to convince himself than anything else. “I’ll be back. I promise.” He allowed himself one more hug, tight enough to hurt, and he felt Hermann’s collarbones bite into where he pressed his face closer, closer. “I promise.”

As Newt stared into Otachi’s open mouth, eyes wide behind shattered glass, and as he skittered away from her child on his hands, asphalt ruining his palms, behind the blinding white-hot of all-consuming terror, he only had one thought. _I promised. I promised. I promised_. 

At no point did Hermann even allow himself to think it; something about it felt like a jinx. Not when he was haunting the ShatterDome, feeling useless. Not when he was nauseous with fear as he watched LOCCENT track the kaiju and ignored the radio silence from Newton. Not when he heard that Newt had obtained a usable specimen, hopefully with minimal blood, sweat, and tears. Not on the longest helicopter ride of his life, as he continually swallowed back the pleas of “Go faster, goddamn it!” that rose in his throat. Not as he somehow kept his hands from running over every inch of Newton’s miraculously unbroken body, as he hooked the both of them to his makeshift Pons unit. (He _might_ have thought it as he felt Newt’s life bleed into his, every cell, till there was nothing left but blue, blue... hell, he might have cried it out for all he knew.) He didn’t say it until he had Newton safely on the helicopter, with the matching rings of blood around their eyes, and then he couldn’t find it within him to say anything else.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Hermann couldn’t stop the way it spilled out from under his breath, over and over again, as he skimmed his hands over Newton’s face, down his neck and shoulders, across his ribs. He tore off a corner of his handkerchief and gave it to Newton to stop up his nosebleed and used the rest to clean the dirt and gravel out of his shredded palms. Newt hissed at the water poured over his burns, but Hermann hummed in a soothing way and kissed the back of his hands. “You’re safe now and I love you.”

“I love you too,” Newt murmured, voice thick with exhaustion, as his eyes slipped closed and his head lolled onto Hermann’s shoulder. Hermann brought a hand up to gently hold Newton’s head in place. He was still dizzy with relief at having him in his arms again, breathing slow and steady, whole if a little worse-for-wear.

The world still had to be saved, but for the next few minutes, they were safe, and they had earned this little bit of rest.

**Author's Note:**

> tbh I don't feel great about this but I wrote it all in one sitting to get back into the flow of writing so I can work on some better ideas so here we are lmao


End file.
